The Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand promotes physical fitness through its BE ACTIVE campaign: Do what you can, enjoy what you do, be active and move your mood.
I’m moving, I’m moving. Wait a minute … walking to the fridge—getting the hang of this now—opening it … there it is. Just as the monkeys stare at the monolith with awe and amazement in 2001, so do I fix mine eyes upon this:
I rip the paper off and break off eight squares, the almonds and raisins and chocolate melting together in a frenzy of ecstatic taste. I’m doing what I can, and enjoying what I do.
It’s not going to work, is it?
I learnt this lesson in the latter half of last year, when my weight insidiously ballooned to the point where going out in public wearing jeans was akin to showing off an anatomic diagram. And they left flesh wounds when I peeled them off at night. To quote Billy Connolly, I’d find “Levi” written around my navel, although I’ve long forsaken name brand jeans for those $20 pairs at The Warehouse.
Child labour be damned, I need pants.
Sigh, I can’t procrastinate any longer, can I? It’s talking about exercise, isn’t it?
I have a long and difficult relationship with physical activity. It stretches back to school, where I didn’t excel at sport in an environment where boys were expected to be star athletes within a very limited range of team sporting codes: rugby, soccer or cricket.
One of my earliest PE memories is still burned into my brain: ten years old, the new kid at primary school, and being lined up with all my male classmates by the teacher to see how far we could throw a ball, with everyone’s results being measured and written down.
I was towards the back of the line, either because I was shying away from the task or out of random assignment, I can’t remember. But as each boy stepped up and launched that ball like a torpedo across the field with balletic precision, my stomach filled up with helium, the nausea inside creeping up my gullet as each set of numbers was called by the teacher and noted down:
28.4 metres.
26.7 metres.
23.2 metres.
Not much room for deviation here.
I finally reached the front, and held the ball in my hand. That furry, green, firm-but-spongy fuzz felt like a shotput.
The eyes of the whole class on me, as well as others who were beginning to gather round, having been let out early for afternoon break time, I breathed in and out and prepared to use every last vestige of energy to launch this stupid fucking ball into orbit.
I drew my right arm back and with a vicious and blind explosion thrust it forward, only to see it arc down into the grass, dirt flying everywhere, before a few spasmic bounces gave way to a gentle, mocking roll.
I heard the laughter before I saw it, coming from all around me, my eyes fixed on the tape measure as my bum throw was dealt the same scientific measurement that had been dealt to the other boys.
“3.4,” cried the teacher, looking up at me and laughing along with all the others.
I turned around and left the school grounds, walking at first but then breaking into a run so those ape-like, pathetic trolls couldn’t see my ape-like pathetic display of unmanly emotion as the tears started to run down my pale face.
I’d never had any great interest in sport, but it was from that day that I grew to resent it. And not just sport, but any physical activity. If I was going to be rejected, then I would get there first. I would exclude myself, and wear it as a badge of honour.
Throughout high school, I avoided sport whenever I could—nigh-on impossible—to avoid my shortcomings being revealed like a soft pink underbelly for a bunch of crocodiles to get their teeth into.
Of course, sport wasn’t the only part of being active—there was also the horror of gym. How many chin-ups can you do? In front of the class. Can you climb the rope up to the ceiling? And not just can you, but how fast can you do it? In front of the class.
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That’s the funny thing about that PE—perhaps it was abbreviated to allow us to forget what the letters stood for: Physical Education. Education. That’s right, fucking teach me something.
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That’s the funny thing about that PE—perhaps it was abbreviated to allow us to forget what the letters stood for: Physical Education. Education. That’s right, fucking teach me something.
When I’m in maths class, you teach me about algebra. When I’m in science class, you teach me about chemicals. When I’m in English, we studied Shakespeare. In religious education, some bollocks about a carpenter who did magic tricks—but at least the intent was there!
In PE, we were never taught anything about ball skills, or how to throw or kick. If you couldn’t even do one chin-up, we weren’t taught that strengthening our upper bodies would help us to do this. And we certainly weren’t taught about the positive brain chemicals that are released when we exercise.
No, there were only three principles of PE: compare, contrast, and laugh.
Luckily, I was a skinny rake throughout my twenties, so it wasn’t necessary for me to engage in physical activity for concerns such as staving off obesity or diabetes. But I was also missing out on something that would have had a profound impact on maintaining my mental wellbeing during a time when I was often treading water.
My school experiences left me completely disempowered around physical activity, with branded negative self-belief about my co-ordination, fitness and strength. I didn’t consider for years—not until my late twenties—that I had the power to be able to change the shape of my body if I was unhappy with it.
I started to go to the gym and lift weights, and slowly learned to ignore the people around me, even though I thought they were looking at me. They were phantoms from the past, and my brain was just tricking me. There was a thirty-year-old man with a good decade’s worth of accomplishments looking back at me in the mirror when I sat at the bench press, not a frightened, gangly fifteen-year-old.
Yet motivation to keep up a consistent fitness regime was hard. I’d only have to miss one day out of my routine, and it’d fall like a house of cards.
I realised this year that I’d been doing it for the wrong reasons. Working out to improve my appearance was ticking the box of being active, and was doing what I could. But I wasn’t enjoying what I did, and I certainly wasn’t moving my mood.
Dean found an iPhone app called Couch to 5K that completely turned things around for me. It set out an incremental programme of fitness that, over a twelve-week period, got you to a point where you could do a 5-kilometre run. Starting with simple walking, and adding in staggered bursts of running as the weeks passed, the goals were achievable and manageable.
Instead of looking at the athleticism of an All Black or the impossibly beautiful mesomorph torso plastered throughout gay media, wondering how I was supposed to cross that chasm (let alone questioning whether it was even necessary), all I had to do was look at a simple instruction that said: today you’re going to walk for five minutes, then run for two.
Say goodbye to compare, contrast and defeat. Say hello to achievement, and those elusive endorphins that annoying fitness freaks go on about.
Yes, being active does feel good.
And there are unlimited ways in which you can make this link in the wellbeing chain work for you. I’m still working it out—my fitness regime has dropped off again, alas—but the difference now is that I know that I can do it.
And so can you.
About Christopher Banks
Greetings, Christopher! Wow! I deeply appreciate the observations and comments you’ve made in your OP! I know exactly where you’re coming from, and have a story that is similar to yours.
Just to establish a point of reference, I’m a 62-year-old man who grew up in the United States, the land of my birth. Before I continue, let me say that I haven’t been dwelling on my mandatory “sports only” P.E. experience ever since I was a boy. I hardly thought about it until I joined a health club in the summer of 2007, when I started working with a personal trainer on a bodybuilding program. It was then that I realized that I had been shortchanged as a boy in mandatory “sports only” P.E., a class that was virtually useless to me and all other nonathletic boys. More about that later …
The mandatory boys’ P.E. of my generation was a disgrace, an exercise (no pun intended) in hypocrisy. There were no exercise programs in those classes. Not even bodybuilding. I never even heard the words “exercise program.” At the time I took P.E., even though I had no interest in sports, I was ashamed of being physically weak; but being as ignorant as I was, I did not know I could do anything about it. No “physical education” of that sort was provided. Actually, hardly any education of any kind; but I did learn to fear and resent coaches and athlete classmates. I was able to overcome the prejudice only many years later.
All boys were forced to participate in sports, no exceptions; but no exercise programs were ever provided. The fact is I really got no exercise. At least not enough consistently to make any difference. I now get more exercise in a single workout session at my health club than I ever did in an entire year of mandatory P.E.
When I started the fourth grade in the fall of 1960, the unsupervised recess period (with which I had had no problem) was replaced with mandatory P.E. (without the gym). When I think about it now from the standpoint of having a lot more knowledge and awareness than I did at that time as a boy, I’m astounded at the hypocrisy on the part of the policymakers who instituted a class that was of no benefit to nonathletic students, all in the name of “physical fitness”! During the last two years of my elementary schooling, the boys were required to take physical fitness tests; but those of us who apparently were in trouble (as far as fitness was concerned) never received any offers of remedial assistance. (Ever hear of “Remedial P.E.”? The very idea is a joke.) So, what was the point of the tests?
Another amazing fact is that almost the entire time, no instruction was provided about the sports themselves! The assumption seems to have been made that every boy was an athlete or an athlete wannabe. In none of my P.E. classes were we ever taught how the game of baseball was played or how the game of basketball was played or how the game of football was played. We were never shown how to throw a baseball or how to throw a football or how to shoot a basketball. These are physical skills that must be taught and developed over time. They are not innate. Instead of being taught about sports, I was taught to be deeply ashamed of myself since I wasn’t already playing sports.
The attitude of my P.E. teachers and coaches toward nonathletic boys was one of indifference or outright contempt. There were no exceptions. Over the years I would hear other nonathletic guys say they had the same experience. When I was growing up, boys who had no interest in sports were called sissies. Today they are called “feminized males.” In my view, the negative stereotyping of nonathletic boys is quite similar to racial prejudice. Why should nonathletic boys have to put up with prejudiced coaches who look down on them?
I’ve been amazed by the stories of bullying I’ve heard from nonathletic guys who had had to endure the traditional mandatory “sports only” P.E. They had bitter experiences and many times were treated unjustly.
Incidentally, boys who were physically disabled were not exempt from P.E., no matter what the disability. I have a friend of my generation who was born without depth perception and another such friend who was crippled in one of his knees as the result of a car wreck when he was four years old. No consideration was given to either of them; and they were both bullied, in spite of the fact that they were not responsible for their physical handicaps.
Speaking of bullying, mandatory P.E. was a nightmare for the boy who was scrawny or slightly built and the boy who was fat. In those school districts in which traditional “sports only” mandatory P.E. is the reality, this sort of bullying is also the reality. Some of the physical bullying I’ve heard about over the years has been nothing less than physical assault, but it was and has been condoned. I’ve heard some real horror stories.
I have an online friend who is an Englishman in his mid-thirties. In one of his mandatory P.E. classes (which, again, did not provide bodybuilding or any other fitness program), his class one day was divided into two teams for a game of cricket, a game that my friend was unprepared to play. His team lost. (Mind you, this is just a team game in a lousy P.E. class, not a competition between two schools.) One of his teammates (who eventually would become a professional rugby player, if I remember correctly) blamed him for the loss. When the game was over, he walked over to my friend and smashed his face with a cricket bat and broke his nose. The young thug was merely suspended for a few days (big deal). When he returned to school, he showed his remorse by shoving my friend into a locker. Who has ever spoken up for these bullied kids? Ask yourself if any sportswriter or sports columnist has even mentioned the problem of bullying in school sports. You already know the answer.
As I’ve already said, many boys’ P.E. coaches historically have been prejudiced against nonathletic boys and against those boys who have less than ideal physiques, especially scrawny boys and fat boys. The issue of bullying in school sports has been completely ignored and, I believe, deliberately so. After all, most sports fans don’t want the image of school sports to be besmirched in any way. (Witness Penn State.)
I mean, if a bully is placed on a pedestal simply for excelling at a sport and suffers no negative consequences as the result of his dishonorable misconduct (as I noticed was true when I was a boy), who cares? As I’ve pointed out (and please forgive me for using a racist epithet now; I’m using it for emphasis, not to condone bigotry), nonathletic boys are nonpersons at best in traditional P.E. classes and, generally speaking, are the niggers in the world of school sports. If I’m bitter, so be it. I care deeply about the indignities nonathletic boys in some school districts are being subjected to today.
If a medical doctor has a patient who needs to become physically active for reasons of his health, the doctor doesn’t say, “Go play a sport.” (Never mind that some sports entail health risks.) The doctor will tell his patient to get some exercise. (For example, the best exercise for people who have diabetes is to take a brisk, nonstop walk from 45 minutes to an hour. No mention of sports.)
There is no reason or justification for forcing nonathletic boys to participate in competitive team games in mandatory P.E. classes — a situation which is almost always guaranteed to encourage bullying. Coaches who take the traditional approach to mandatory P.E. are not going to be interested in the nonathletic boys, anyway. They will be inclined to have a dismissive, if not abusive, attitude toward them. Why should nonathletic boys be subjected to coaches who are prejudiced against them, viewing them as “effeminate” or unmanly? My wife taught high-school math classes for about 11 years. She said any math teacher who treated students experiencing difficulty with math the same way that traditional coaches frequently have treated nonathletic boys would be fired. But somehow mandatory P.E. has always been “different.”
I favor the retention of “sports only” P.E. as an elective. I say let the athletic kids play sports; and if you are unwilling to provide genuine fitness programs for the nonathletic kids, stop imposing your intolerance upon them and leave them alone.
I know what doesn’t work and what does work for nonathletic boys because I’ve experienced both in my life. For several years I’ve been working on a bodybuilding program with a personal trainer at a local health club. The experience has been psychologically therapeutic for me as well as being physically beneficial. The physical trainers actually appreciate me because of my dedication. My health club is like a community. No one is bullied. I’ve been treated with respect. Since the members (who are quite a diverse lot, physically speaking) are minding their own business as they pay attention to their own workouts and exercise routines, there is none of the machismo and obnoxious, boring, contemptible “alpha male” behavior that is so often encouraged in school sports.
I still have a long way to go to achieve my goal. (There are no shortcuts in building up a man’s physique. It’s hard work that takes patience.) But I’ve been amazed by the muscular development I’ve already achieved at my age. And at the age of 62!
Now, when mandatory “sports only” P.E. became a rather unpleasant, bitter reality in my life, I was weak and scrawny. On the very last day of school when the dreaded daily torment of mandatory P.E. had finally to come to an end, I was — yep, you guessed it — weak and scrawny. So much for physical fitness!
Please excuse me for being a little repetitive. I just wanted to be sure I was understood.
Christopher, you might want to check your blog website where I’ve already posted twice today about your OP.
I deeply appreciate your observations about traditional mandatory P.E. You’re absolutely right in your observation about the lack of education in “physical education.” I could go into a long discourse here, but will only give a single example from my own boyhood mandatory “sports only” P.E. experience, as compared to my currently ongoing health club experience.
My first trainer occasionally would vary the workout routine with an introduction to a sport. In one of our sessions, he showed me how to shoot a basketball. For decades I had assumed that shooting a basketball was simply a matter of thrusting the ball through the air toward the hoop. I was wrong! I was amazed to learn that shooting a basketball involved particular wrist and finger movements that had to be repeated frequently in order to develop the skill. Like learning how to type, I guess. In other words, it’s a physical skill that’s not innate. I could have learned to shoot a basketball if someone had only showed me how.
None of my P.E. teachers or coaches ever taught any of my classes how to shoot a basketball. They also never taught how to throw a baseball or a football; and they never taught how the game of baseball, football, or basketball was played. I had been made to feel deeply ashamed of myself in mandatory “sports only” P.E. for not having already learned how to play sports. So much for the education in “physical education”!
Thanks to my very decent physical trainer, I realized that I had been shortchanged in my P.E. classes, which were totally useless for nonathletic boys.
Let’s get something straight. The purpose of traditional PE was not physical conditioning, but social conditioning. It was built on tacit understanding among men who had had universal service in the WW2-era military, and who had been made to accept that more or less dehumanizing experience as [i]what makes men.[/i]
The public rationale for PE – healthy bodies for all boys and girls – was intended for women, who still had control of much of education. The reality for boys – again unspoken – was that the nation wanted them for soldiers, and more than that, that old soldiers wanted them to earn their manhood in the way they had. Soldiers, then as today, have to be part of a clear physical hierarchy that has no use for outliers, no place for stragglers, and no room for anything less than self-reliant compliance.
The message as I see it: You want to live as a man? Measure up. Meet standards. You get no help. We’re not here to help. We’re here to sort you out: those who will be soldiers and men and those who will be dead weight. Become part of the unit, the team, or fail. Fail, and you will pay now and for the rest of your life.
That’s what boot camp is for. As if I need to point this out, there hasn’t been a military draft in this country for decades. Besides, the mandatory boys’ P.E. of my youth was never presented by the school policymakers as a preparation for serving in the military. The official rationale was to promote physical fitness. As I pointed out, they were lying and downright hypocritical. In none of my P.E. classes was any instruction about sports ever provided (with the single exception of scarcely a minute’s instruction about wrestling holds one day during my sixth-grade year).
Sorry, buddy; but we’re not living in Sparta or Nazi Germany.
Incidentally, did it ever occur to you that some men who are “sorted out,” as you put it, make an invaluable contribution to society? How many scientists, for example, have been outstanding soldiers? The truth is that a country needs both in order to survive. I also wonder if you’re aware that great courage is not restricted to the battlefield.
I said “incidentally” because my first post apparently did not post moderation.
If the purpose of P.E. was to prepare boys to become soldiers, then that should have been made perfectly clear. It wasn’t. Besides, unless I’m mistaken, although the majority of teachers were women, school policy was determined by men — as most state legislators, school board members, etc. at that time were men.
If we were living in a military society, you would have a point; but the fact is that the United States today is not a military society. There hasn’t been a military draft in decades.
I question what seems to be your definition of what it takes to be a man. There have been men of great courage who don’t fit your “standards.” I would suggest you do some research. Read a good biography of Raoul Wallenberg, for example, who was one of the greatest heroes of World War II and wasn’t even a soldier. Tell us if Wallenberg epitomized machismo. Not meaning to be snarky here. I’m just asking you to broaden your outlook.
Don’t mean to be petty, but I meant “did not pass moderation.” I also meant “militaristic society” (not “military” society), such as a militaristic society continually threatened by foreign enemies.
Bill, perhaps my tone misled you. I’m on your side of this argument. I don’t agree with the philosophy I described. I do, however, want to express troubling ideas frankly, even confrontationally, because we so often want to understate their power.
As you pointed out from your own experience, the boys’ PE curriculum was built on hypocritical principles for many years. It happened because that kind of fuzzy thinking addressed society’s tacit desires while appearing to honor its stated ideals – and because in many places well into the 1970s, you just did not criticize school administration. Doing so was understood as a break with your community and a slap in the face of your neighbors, whose values were to go along and not make trouble. My own family made enemies this way, and in a relatively enlightened school district at that.
I owe you a VERY big apology, Peter. Coincidentally, earlier this afternoon before you posted in this topic again, I read your first post to my wife, who is very analytical in her thinking. (One of the reasons I fell in love with her when we had first met was because she was so intelligent and well-informed, in addition to being good-looking.) She told me she was not convinced you actually endorsed the point of view you expressed. In fact, she suspected I had you pegged wrong; and, indeed, she has turned out to be right!
Granted, when I started taking mandatory P.E., the Cold War had been going on for years with no end in sight; and the U.S. had already participated in one proxy war (Korea). So, for all I know, WW2 veterans could have had fears about the next generation of boys being “soft.” Of course, I don’t know how widespread this view actually was at the time; but it is a sad fact that fuzzy thinking frequently ends up becoming widely accepted.
I allowed myself to react emotionally again — which is not a wise thing to do online, if only because the possibility does exist for misunderstandings. So, this “Bill” will admit that sometimes he has acted like a complete idiot here at GMP. Again, Peter, you have my apologies; and thanks for clearing up this misunderstanding.
Best regards.
Consider it water under the bridge. Sure would like to get some more eyeballs in on this topic, though. Maybe I’ll write on it myself.